AUTOMATION CULTURES

Public anxieties about the impact of labour automation lie at the heart of discussions about the future of work. While for some, labour automation signals imminent job replacement and human redundancy-encapsulated in the slogan ‘the robots are taking our jobs'-for others, it represents efficiency and improved working conditions on a potentially global scale. It can evoke images of human mechanization and a sense of alienation from the objects that we produce and consume. Yet it can also evoke the idea of a liberated human workforce, increasingly free to pursue more creative and fulfilling tasks. These types of image suggest the role of the imagination in framing debates about work... 1.) What role do cultural representations of automated labour play in how we conceive of and experience work, and how has this changed over the course of four industrial revolutions?